A WiMAX technology is an air interface standard proposed on the basis of the IEEE 802.16 series broadband wireless standards. A current WiMAX network wireless side is mainly based on the IEEE 802.16d/e standard; the IEEE 802.16d standard defines a medium access control (MAC) layer of a fixed broadband wireless access system that supports various service types and a plurality of corresponding physical layer frameworks; and the IEEE 802.16e standard adds some new functions on the basis of the IEEE 802.16d standard, so as to support user mobility.
FIG. 1 is a reference model of a WiMAX network architecture, mainly including three parts: a client (a mobile station/subscriber station (referred to as MS/SS), that is, a mobile terminal/registration terminal), an access service network (referred to as ASN), and a connectivity service network (referred to as CSN).
The ASN may include a base station (referred to as BS) and an access service network gateway (referred to as ASN GW). The CSN may include logical entities such as a prepaid service (PPS) server and an authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA) server.
In an existing protocol, logical entities between the MS/SS, ASN, and CSN conduct communication through R1 to R6 interfaces. Referring to FIG. 1, the R1 interface is a wireless air interface and is mainly defined by IEEE 802.16d/e, an R2 is a logical interface, and an R3, R4, and R5 interfaces are all wired interfaces.
A WiFi system is a wireless broadband network access technology defined by an 802.11 protocol published by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and its feature lies in requiring no wiring. A station (STA) may establish a connection with an access point (AP) through an air interface defined by the 802.11 protocol. Because the 802.11 series protocols only focus on the definition of the air interface protocol between the STA and the AP, the AP must be converged with another network, and the another network provides network-side services for the STA, so as to implement wireless network access of the STA. With the development of the deployment of the WiFi network, in order to manage centralized APs, some manufacturers also design an access controller (AC) or a module having a similar function, to implement management on the APs and enable the APs to connect to the network side through the AC.
The development of the communication technologies makes convergence between communication systems become a trend. As two typical technologies of wireless access, convergence of WiFi and WiMAX systems is also a tendency. Because WiFi does not have its own network-side technical specification, sharing of a core network CSN with WiMAX becomes the main content of its network convergence.
The inventor finds that, currently, the technology of convergence of WiFi and WiMAX systems is mainly a solution of adding an adaptation layer in a protocol stack of two heterogeneous networks, where the solution is defined in the 802.21 protocol. However, implementation of this solution requires greater change to an existing network device, and the solution cannot be implemented through smooth upgrade of the existing device.